Hill v. Colorado

The controlling inquiry is whether the government adopted the regulation because of disagreement with a message. Colorado's law restricts where certain close, unconsented-to approaches may occur; it does not prohibit speech, signs, or leaflets based on their subject or viewpoint. The Colorado Supreme Court had also construed the law to apply equally to demonstrators of every viewpoint.

Colorado's interests are unrelated to the content of a speaker's message. The State sought to protect access to health care facilities, patients' physical and emotional well-being, and clear, evenhanded enforcement rules. Those interests concern the manner of close personal encounters, not whether a speaker supports or opposes abortion or any other cause.

The statute's references to oral "protest, education, or counseling" do not make it content based. Courts may sometimes examine the content of words to determine whether a legal rule applies to conduct, just as they do with threats, offers, or picketing. Here, those terms identify the broad category of communicative approaches likely to create the unwanted close encounter the statute addresses, while leaving casual social conversation outside its scope.

Unlike the labor-dispute exemption invalidated in Carey v. Brown, the law does not favor discussion of one subject while banning another. It applies to any person, including advocates, salespeople, fundraisers, missionaries, and activists, who approaches an unwilling listener within the regulated area to leaflet, sign-display, protest, educate, or counsel.

Colorado has significant and legitimate interests in protecting unobstructed access to medical facilities and in shielding patients, who may be physically or emotionally vulnerable, from unwanted close encounters and confrontational approaches. The First Amendment protects efforts to persuade, but it does not eliminate the State's authority to protect an unwilling listener from intrusive personal importunity in an appropriate setting.

The law is narrowly tailored even though it is not the least restrictive means available. It regulates only a knowing approach within eight feet, only within 100 feet of a facility entrance, and only when the other person has not consented. It permits speakers to remain stationary, to speak or display signs from nearby, and to communicate with listeners who welcome the approach.

The statute does not have the defects of the fifteen-foot floating buffer zone struck down in Schenck. Its zone is smaller; a speaker need not retreat merely because a pedestrian passes nearby; and the knowing-approach requirement reduces the risk of accidental violations. The Court concluded that normal speech and visible signs can generally cross an eight-foot distance.

Leafletting is burdened more substantially, but not eliminated. A speaker may stand near an incoming pedestrian's path and offer literature without approaching within eight feet; pedestrians remain free to accept or decline it. The First Amendment guarantees an opportunity to reach willing listeners, not a right to force an unwanted face-to-face encounter with unwilling ones.

A clear prophylactic line was reasonable because case-by-case judgments about whether every individual approach was physically harassing would be difficult and subjective. The rule gives both speakers and police objective guidance while leaving the speaker substantial room to convey a message.

The statute's coverage of all health care facilities and all speakers does not itself establish a First Amendment defect. A generally applicable legislative rule may be broader than the particular incidents that prompted its enactment, especially where people entering health care facilities share the interests in access, privacy, and protection from intrusive approaches.

The comprehensive scope of the law also supports, rather than undermines, the conclusion that it is not discriminatory. Colorado did not single out known bad actors or only antiabortion speakers; it adopted a general policy applicable to all persons in the relevant locations.

The statute does not ban signs, oral speech, or leaflets. It imposes a limited place restriction on a particular method of delivering those messages. Petitioners did not show that the law would deter a substantial amount of protected speech by persons not before the Court relative to the law's plainly legitimate applications.

A law is impermissibly vague if ordinary people cannot reasonably understand what it prohibits or if it authorizes arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. This law requires that a person knowingly approach within eight feet, without consent, for a stated communicative purpose, which substantially reduces the risk of innocent or accidental violations.

The terms "protest," "education," and "counseling," as well as the concepts of consent and approach, are ordinary words that provide sufficient guidance in the statute's usual applications. The Constitution does not demand mathematical precision in language regulating expressive conduct.

Hypothetical borderline questions, such as whether a particular arm movement is an approach, do not support a facial challenge. The statute is plainly valid in the overwhelming majority of its intended applications, and its specific distance and geographic limits provide meaningful enforcement guidance.

Prior-restraint doctrine principally concerns systems in which public officials may deny a speaker permission to use a forum before expression occurs. Colorado's statute creates no licensing or permitting scheme, and it does not authorize an official to approve or deny a message.

A pedestrian's refusal to consent affects only a speaker's ability to make a close physical approach to that particular person. It does not silence the speaker, bar communication with willing listeners, prohibit a viewpoint, or restrict speech elsewhere in the regulated area.

The law therefore recognizes a listener's limited ability to avoid an unwanted close encounter while preserving the speaker's ability to speak, display signs, and offer literature subject to the statute's narrow location-based restriction. That limited choice is not a heckler's veto.